A few more Halflings...

Why not, hey? In what is quite possibly my last Halflings of the winter (and challenge), here's another batch of 5 of the little fellows, and it includes some of my favourites, as today we have a berserker, a Wizard, a Honey Mage, a General and a Psion.

From left to right : Psion, Berserker, Wizard, General Bilbo Bonaparte, Honey Mage

Yes, we have ourselves our very first Napoleonic Halfling, people! And not any Napoleonic soldier, but the man himself, Emperor of the Halflings, general extraordinaire Bilbo Bonaparte. Funny thing is, and I don't remember who it was,  but someone in a comment asked if there was any Napoleonic Halflings. I smiled at the time, knowing this guy was coming. 

The Berserker is one of my favourite sculpt of the range, and I gave her the fiery orange hair of her fanatic Dwarven cousins, Slayers of Trolls. I'm also very pleased with the wizard, as I'm really happy with my painting on him, especially his flaming hands, which I think I nailed. And one cannot not talk about the Honey Mage! It make so much sense that Halflings would've come up with a school of magic that gives them unlimited honey! I love the bees all over her, and the honey dipper wizard staff is a seriously nice touch.

I had a LOT of fun painting all these Halflings; so often the subjects of our painting is serious, with monsters and wars and such, that this was just a very refreshing little project. However I believe these will my last of the winter as I'm also working on a side duel due for early March (it's coming Sander, no worries. It's gonna be awesome) and I would like to add a few pts to that 30K duel. I did managed to paint 25 of 'em little fellows, and since my goal was between 20 and 25 I can say "mission accomplie". I have quite enough to create a LeafGrave warband, and I even have the choice between three Wizards! So I gather it is time for a family portrait of the bunch. 

So that's 25 more points. Now if you'll excuse me, second midnight snack is coming...

Halflings Part IV (LeafGrave project)

And here he was, a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate.

Not very original, am I?

Yes, five more Halflings this week. I'm just amazed I managed to keep my pledge of five per week, really! And for this week we have a pretty bizarre and heteroclite bunch of little men, with a Digger, a Potion Maker, a Linksman, a Thief and a Warrior Princess (!). Some of these are definitely on the silly side of things, but it's what makes this range's charm. 

From left to right : Potion Maker, Digger, Warrior Princess, Linksman and (80s) Thief

I'm quite pleased with the way the Warrior-Princess came out, as I didn't want to go with a boring metal or gold plated "armour". She reminds me of the Princess in one of the Super Mario NES game., I even resisted the urge of painting her pink! I do love her gigantic sword. Make fun of her incredibly impractical armour at your own risk, fellas!

Notice the Linksman's golf bag filled with weapons! 

And then we have the Thief, dressed as a 80s hair band member for some reason, complete with the haircut, the tight pants, the headband and the short coat with glitter and epaulets! When I saw it, I figured I just had to paint it as the Europe band singer, complete with white jacket, pink pants and blonde hair! Those were the days, am I right?!

Makes for a lousy thief's attire if you ask me, maybe she can bling her victims' attention away from her pick pocketing? 

Anyways, silly and fun bunch, silly post, good fun to help survive a sad February. I'm up to 20 Halflings done, and my goal was 25, so I might just skip a week next week. Or not. We'll see.

And another 25 pts

Halflings, Part III (LeafGrave project)

Judge me by my size, do you?

Those of you actually reading my ramblings may recall that the Halflings are meant, amongst other things, to play some Frostgrave games (which I renamed LeafGrave for this project). And to play LeafGrave, you need at least two very important things : 1) a wizard and 2) an apprentice. So it was time to paint one of each! Also this week a Paladin, a bard and a fighter.

From left to right: Fighter, Bard, Apprentice, Mage and Paladin

The Mage is to be used as an Elementalist for LeafGrave. I didn't painted the Apprentice in the same colour scheme as the Mage, which many people do, as I wanted the Apprentice to blend with other of my Halflings wizards. 

Because yes, I have a few more Halflings wizards from that range so that will leave me the option of building different Halfling warbands with different wizards. I expect you'll see at least one or two more practitioner of magic in the next month or so! I did however gave the apprentice the same type of "lightning blue" magic flame to tie him up. 

I hope you keep enjoying the little guys as much as I enjoy painting them. It's like going through all the possible D&D Character classes, 5 Halflings at a time.

More Halflings (possibly, probably) to come next week!

And another 25 pts for the Challenge

Halflings Part II (LeafGrave project)

More StoneHaven Halflings this week, as I'm keeping up with my goals of painting 5 per week. The little buggers are a ton of fun to paint, and since each one is very different it keeps me from being bored of painting the same thing.

And so this week we have a gardener, a lorekeeper, a ranger, a ratcatcher and a skelly.

From left to right : Ranger, Gardener, Ratcatcher, Skelly and Lorekeeper

I exceptionally went with a different base style for the skeleton as the nice and happy goblin green didn't seem to fit very well with him. That figure is very cool, and the smoking pipe is a nice touch. I love the funny details on many of them; if you look closely, the Lorekeeper, just like any good teacher, has elbow patches on his jacket!

Same as the previous Halflings,  I used green and brown when possible while still going all over the place in terms of colours, to keep their individuality.

25 more points for the challenge!

Halflings, Part I (LeafGrave project)

As I mentionned in a previous post, I'm starting the work on a LeafGrave/Fantasy skirmish project ; the first Warband is a band of Halflings. I have around 40 of the little buggers from a StoneHaven Kickstarter, and I'd like to paint at least 20 of them for the Painting Challenge. The plan is to paint 5 of them per week, give or take a few weeks.

And it starts this week. As I mentioned, what I really love about the range is that each figures represents a RPG "class" or "profession", and every one of them is unique and full or personality. For this first batch of 5, we have the fighter, the chief, the cleric, the archer and the Rogue.

From left to right: fighter, cleric, chief, archer and rogue

The figures are lovely and super detailed, and have that Halfling caricatural look that I like. While painting them I realized one doesn't save that much time  when "batch painting" 5 completely different figures with different colour schemes! I wouldn't paint 10 at a time, that's for sure. 

I painted each one individually, but I did favour green and brown tones, which I find are traditional Halflings colours. I went with a super old school "goblin green" style of base to get a bit of that old 80s Citadel/AD&D vibe, but also because I didn't want to detract from the figures and wanted to keep a very woodland vibe to the whole bunch.

So 5 28mm (if a bit of the smaller side of the scale! ) figures equals 25pts to add to my challenge total!

LeafGrave

Ruins are the Cathedrals of time

So last Fall I'm minding my own business when I see on Facebook an add for a Halfling kickstarter. The company who produces the range is called StoneHaven Miniatures (never heard of them). The concept art is quite fun, and I do like my Halflings (play one in our Warhammer RPG campaign). So I I push the "Follow" button. And as the campaign advances they keep coming up with more awesome concepts, it tickles my nostalgia D&D button and...yeah you know where this is going...I cave in, lost my mind and went for the "Completionist" reward. Yep, the whole range. Some 50 Halflings + a few mounted ones. It was at the time my first real big Kickstarter pledge. So as is often the case in my case, I now have figures, and I need to find a game to play with them!

Just an example of the concept art, figures now in possesion

The figures were all individuals and in my eyes didn't fit at all in a big battle "Warhammer" type game. Fortunately, I've been looking at doing some fantasy skirmishes for a while; projects that are faster to paint, and easier to play on a whim with a friend or two. I figured the Halflings would provide the first side, the "good guys".

After hearing about it for months and months I figured FrostGrave would be a good pick. The Halfling Kickstarter came with all sorts of mages, archers, etc. so it would fit well. But I also got Songs of Blades & Heroes, just in case.

Now from my reading I do like FrostGrave rules, but I'm not really a fan of the setting; mostly because I'm a lazy fuck and I don't feel like creating a whole winter theme terrain collection. Also, I don't like to base my figures for a particular game, and so the winter basing style didn't appeal either. Now of course nothing stops me from using the rules to another setting, which is exactly what I'm going to do. So what kind of terrain I have a lot of? Woodlands, that's what (I play French and Indian Wars). So LeafGrave, the abandonned ruined city in the middle of an old forest, was thus born.

You might remember in my last post I found the perfect terrain kickstarter for it...

Now, as usual, I don't like to create exact forces in advance, but rather to paint enough troops to allow me to pick and choose later on. Which is what I'm going to do with my halflings. So I'd like to paint at least 20 figures to start, with a few mages available, as well as fighters, archers, etc. And if I end up prefering Songs of Blade & Heroes, I can still use the same setting of course.

In the coming months, for the Challenge, I will concentrate on the halflings, but I will also need a second warband to face my little men. I'm thinking Goblins...although I'm open to suggestions. Anyone?

Halflings getting prep up for LeafGrave

Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, Part VII - The Reckoning

A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace

Yes, the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is back for it's 7th year (I know, time flies). Better and bigger than ever, with 100 participants!

And this time, I'm ready! No house move, no health issues, nothing to stop me from reaching my goal of having my best challenge to date. My target is 550pts, which is basically my record, but I really hope I can break that glass ceiling! And I'm paint starved, really, having spent most of the last few months working on the house and such.

I've always been a bit lazy in the Challenge preparation, doing some but never enough and preferring to keep painting like a dumbass while the Challenge start date loomed large. But this year I've really step up my prep game.

In the coming three months, on the Fantasy and Sc-Fi side of things, I've identified three main projects I want to work on.

1 - Finish my second 28mm Sci-fi outfit; it's a small project, around 13 figures so I can play some skirmish Sci-Fi games. I'd like to start with this and get it out of the way fast. I just finished gluing them and they are in the priming room. I'll show the complete force at the same time, and I'm not telling!

2 - The Halfling bonanza. In a fit of crazyness, I funded two Halfling projets this year! The Westfalia Halfmen army and Stonehaven's Halfling Adventurers Miniatures . I received Stonehaven offering first and most of them are reading for painting. I, ahem, bought the whole freakin' range, so that's a lot of little guys! Not sure I'll paint them all in the Challenge but I'd like to have enough of them to play some skirmish games. Should I have enough time (I doubt it very much) I'll start the Westfalia ones.

The first twenty odd StoneHaven Halflings; clean, glue sand, prime, repeat

3 - The 30K Epic project (and accompanying duel). Last year Greg from Fawcett  Avenue Conscripts used the challenge to start an Epic 30K project (and it was epic), and influenced me big time. I've been wanting to do Epic for quite a while and finally took the plunge and amass enough figures to keep me painting for a few months (I think). This should be my main project for the next three months. To keep things even more interesting, I entered into a 30K side Duel with four of the maniacs from the Challenge asylum;

Rules: Most points of painted miniatures in any scale 

Prize: A painted single 28mm 30k or small formation of 6mm 30k figures from the defeated participants

All the vehicles are primed, glued, based and ready to be painted.

Do I have a chance to win? No, I don't think so! But it's going to be a lot of fun nonetheless. Greg is a 30K freak as are the other guys, and it should be fun to see what they all come up with.

4 - There's a 4...kinda. I'm leaving room to add a few Oldhammer pieces to break things up. Probably some Chaos Knights and Nurgle Champions who've been sitting on my painting table for way too long.

And of course, I intend to participate in at least a few of the Bonus theme rounds...

January 8th - Armour

January 22nd - East

February 5th - Terrain: 'Home'

February 19th - West

March 5th - Character(s) and/or Scene from a Movie, TV program, Book or piece of Music

In the coming weeks I'll discuss my 30K and my "LeafGrave" projects in more depth. And then we are off to the races!